Stand alone wimax system and method

Abstract

A WiMAX based system having a base station which communicates to a plurality of consumer premises equipment (CPE) is disclosed. The base station obtains and stores information corresponding to the MAC addresses of each CPE. Messages from one CPE can be sent to the base station and then sent to another CPE using the MAC address stored in the base station. Each CPE may originate an uplink multicast message for transmission to more than one CPE. When the base station receives the uplink multicast message, it broadcasts the multicast message to all of the CPEs identified in the multicast message including the originating CPE. When the originating CPE recognizes the multicast message as a message it originated, the originating CPE drops the multicast message. The CPEs may be grouped into virtual local area networks (VLANs) using group identifiers which permit multicast messages to be transmitted to specific groups of CPEs.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. 119 of Canadian patent application 2,732,181 filed on Feb. 18, 2011.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]This invention relates to wireless networks. More specifically, this invention relates to a wireless network implementing the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) standard.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]A wireless network is a common type of computer network that incorporates two or more devices capable of communicating wirelessly. The prevalence of wireless devices has grown exponentially with the adoption of mobile phones and other types of personal and consumer electronics, i.e. smart phones, tablets, netbooks, laptop computers and other wireless electronic devices.[0004]The growth of wireless networking has grown in parallel with the adoption of Wi-Fi™, the series of wireless local area network (wireless LAN / WLAN) protocols based on the series of Institute of Electrica...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0022]A further advantage of the present invention is the ability to form Virtual Local Area Networks amongst end users of a WiMAX network in a simple and cost effective manner. By accessing the information stored within a base station, the base station is capable of rerouting messages to VLAN members without having to resort to IP-tunneling or other more convoluted techniques. In this way, access and security of VLANs can be managed simply and effectively by a base station. CPEs can be grouped logically into a single broadcast domain. Further, broadcast traffic can be confined to specific VLAN members only, resulting in increased security and a reduction of traffic to the rest of the network.

Problems solved by technology

However, a difference between broadcasting and multicasting is that multicasting may limit the pool of receivers to those that are identified as part of the receiver group.

However, the prior WiMAX networks suffer from the disadvantage that any CPE-to-CPE multicast transmissions must be managed by and routed from the Access Network even for the CPEs that are behind the same Base Station.

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